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The Origins of Design Education in Latin America: From the hfg in Ulm to Globalization1

Silvia Fernández

During the 1960s and ‘70s, the economies of Latin American coun-tries, whether socialist, liberal, or conservative, generally reoriented themselves towards a policy of import substitution and industrial development. Design was placed within this overall industrial policy. The creation of the first institutions for design education proliferated. This reform was never completed, however. From the 1980s on, Latin America was dragged into globalization and a policy of foreign debts that generated a new form of dependence.

The current deep economic crisis in Latin America opens a space for critical reflection including, by extension, the role of design. The Hochschule für Gestaltung (hfg) ulm is a starting point because it had a great influence on the propagation of design education and design discourse in Latin America.

What were the contextual conditions that made this influ-ence possible?

1. The emphasis on industrialization was imposed by a change in foreign trade conditions. (Argentina, for exam-ple, was the victim of a trade blockade imposed by the European Community.)2

2. Governments, as a response to the dilemma of underdevel-opment, formulated policies of national industrial upgrad-ing, with management policies and the utilization of human resources, which included design as a profession.

3. The local artistic avant-garde already had begun, in the early 1950s, to withdraw from traditional art, and extended their activities to the new field design.

4. Latin American students and visitors to ulm returned to their own countries with new information.3

5. Faculty members of the hfg established contacts, traveled, and participated in programs assisting Latin American countries in their development of the design profession.

Why was the hfg an important option for Latin American countries?

1. It was the only institution that offered in this context an operative, concrete answer to the challenges of industrial-ization.

1 This research has been carried out using bibliographies, published works, works-in-progress, personal communications, and testimonies from the little-docu-mented history of design education in Latin America. Factual errors that were found in a series of publications have been corrected. hfg ulm will be written in lower case, in the ulmian manner.

2 Julio Godio, El mundo en que vivimos (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2000), 18.

3 Jorge N. Bozzno, Proyecto: razón y esper-anza. Escuela Superior de Diseño de Ulm (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1998), 142.

© 2005 Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyDesign Issues: Volume 22, Number 1 Winter 2006

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2. The hfg championed the insertion of design into the indus-trial process, and discarded all artistic or decorative specu-lations about design activity.

Lucila Fernández, in Modernity and Postmodernity in Cuba,4 argued with implicit reference to the influence of ulmian teachers in Latin America:

It was in the middle of the crisis of the modern movement, towards the end of the 1960s, when the image of design was exported intensively to peripheral and unindustrialized countries. Perhaps it would appear that the ghost of the romantic escapes of the nineteenth century, and the idyllic lives lived outside of Europe, will now reappear. When the ideal gives way in Europe, hope places itself in other spaces overseas.

The idea of exportation does not fit the case of the hfg, and even less the adjective “romantic.” Max Bill, Otl Aicher, Tomás Maldonado (from Argentina), Gui Bonsiepe, Claude Schnaidt, and other teach-ers and students were the propagators of the base of the school in Latin America, under the explicit wish of local authorities. In a rare case of inverse transculturalization, they motivated other European colleagues to get to know Latin America. Nor is it a case of the imposition of a model, since the school understood design as a tool of emancipation. Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru started design education during the 1960s, to a considerable degree with an ulmian approach.

Latin Americans who studied at the hfg in ulm (thirty-one, accord-ing to the school’s archives) include:

• Brazil (ten): Jorge Bodanzky, Elke Koch-Weser, Frauke Koch-Weser, Almir Mavignier, Isa Noeira da Cunha, Yedda Pitanguy, Mary Viera, Günter Weimer, Alexandre Wollner, and Mario Giraldo Zocchio;

• Argentina (nine): Marı́a Luz Agriano, Francisco Bullrich, Horacio Denot, Andrés Miguel Dimitreu, Mario Forné, Marı́a Fraxedas, Alicia Hamm, Roberto Hamm, and Jeanine Meerapfel;

• Chile (three): Roger Magdahl, Eduardo Morales, and Eduardo Vargas-Stoller;

• Mexico (five): A. Casillas de Alba, Marı́a Dı́az Gómez, Raúl Dı́az Gómez, Ana Marı́a Rutenberg, and Elena Graciela Vismara;

• Colombia (two): José Gamez Orduz and Herman Tobón;• Venezuela (one): Maurice Poler; and• Peru (one): Elsa Villanueva.

4 Lucila Fernández, Modernidad y posmo-dernidad desde Cuba. Historiar desde la periferia: historia e historias del diseño (Actas de la 1ª Reunión Científica Internacional de Historiadores y Estudios de Diseño. Publicacions, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, 2001), 73.

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Figure 1Design institutions in Latin America created in the period between the fifties and the eight-ies of the 20th century.


This reality, little-known elsewhere, led Yves Zimmerman to sustain in his prologue, “Regarding Otl Aicher” for El Mundo como Proyecto, “Just as there are numerous publications of the Bauhaus, we, in turn, almost completely lack texts or testimonies regarding the hfg, at least in Spanish. This is due, no doubt, to the fact that there has been no debate over the innovative pedagogical propositions for design this school has to offer in Hispanic latitudes.”5 Perhaps there were neither texts nor discussion in Spain, but in the Latin American institutions for design education there was no lack of testimony, and much less confrontation, which, in the best ulmian style, was the way to design and learn. The hfg had shown itself as an institution of strong charac-ter, free, self-critical, intransigent on programmatic questions, with a transparent educational strategy which more than once has pushed beyond the limits, clear in the area of project definition, immune to soft compromises, with strong convictions and objectives which went beyond simple academic formation and demanded of its participants social commitment and a critical attitude towards reality. These char-acteristics often generated irreconcilable differences as a result of their own dialectic. These differences nevertheless resulted in inno-vation that allowed for the definition of an avant-garde educational project that, due to its coherence, exerted during the 1960s a broad influence on the creation of design institutions not only in Latin America, but also on preexisting curricula elsewhere. “During the ‘50s and ‘60s, all schools found themselves influenced by Ulm.”6

TestimoniesIn 1950, the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo (MASP) offered an introductory level course in craftsmanship and introduction to the arts at the Institute of Contemporary Art (IAC). The director, Pietro Maria Bardi, sustained that it was absurd that the largest industrial city in Latin America was totally unconcerned with the form of its industrialized products.7

The Institute’s first group of instructors included Pietro M. Bardi (art history), Lina Bo Bardi (industrial design), and Jacob Ruchti (basic course, brought with him to IAC from the Chicago Institute of Design and Moholy-Nagy’s ideas regarding design education).

In this first IAC course were—among others—students such as Alexandre Wollner, Antonio Maluf, Mauricio Nogueira Lima, and Emilie Chamie who participated in the concrete art movement and later on became pioneers of design in Brazil.

Lina Bo and Pietro M. Bardi brought a number of internation-ally known personalities to Brazil, including Max Bill. In 1951, just before the First São Paulo Biennial Art Exhibition, at which Bill was awarded the international prize, MASP put together a retrospective exhibition of his work.

On the occasion of the Second Biennial in 1953, Max Bill again went to Brazil at the invitation of the Brazilian government to

5 Otl Aicher, preface to Yves Zimmermann, El mundo como proyecto (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili: 1994), 8.

6 Klaus Lehmann, Victor Margolin, Jordi Pericot, Tony Russel, et al., Temes de Disseny Nº 6. Pedagogía del diseño, Jordi Pericot, ed. (Barcelona: Escola de Disseny Elisava, 1996), 55.

7 Alexandre Wollner, Design visual, 50 años (São Paulo: Cosac e Naify, 2003), 49.


lecture in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. He spoke about the creation of a new design school in Ulm, and asked Bardi to recommend a student for the new school. Alexandre Wollner went to Ulm and, after his return, became one of the most influential graphic design-ers in Brazil.

Bardi closed down the IAC in late 1953.In 1961, the University of São Paulo offered the first course

in visual communication and industrial design. (In Brazil, the term “industrial design” covers both product design and visual communi-cation.) But it was the creation of the College of Industrial Design of Rio de Janeiro (ESDI) that is the model for the hypothesis presented here: it came about through a political decision, in support of a national program for industrialization, and with the local artistic and architectural avant-garde’s explicit support from ulmian teachers.

In 1956, Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt, executive director of the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro, met with Max Bill and Tomás Maldonado in Europe to develop an idea for a design school (Escola técnica da criação). Maldonado formulated the outline based on the ulm experience.8 Thus, the idea of a new school of design in Rio de Janeiro and the implantation of the hfg ulm are almost contemporaneous.9

In 1960, the capital of Brazil was moved to Brasilia. The City of Rio de Janeiro was transformed into the State of Guanabara; and Carlos Lacerda, a militant politician of the National Democratic Union (UDN)—a conservative party opposed to the Social Democratic Party (PSD), whose president was Jucelino Kubitschek—was elected as first governor. The intensity and speed of Brazilian industrial development, which appeared to give the new State of Guanabara an important role to play, made the idea of creating an industrial design course attractive to the governor.

There were precedents for this. The Secretary of Education, Carlos Fleixa Ribeiro, had been the executive director of the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (MAM) a few years earlier, and had created a working group in order to propose and define the base for the project.10

Between 1959 and 1960, Maldonado and Aicher taught the first courses at the MAM. Others were taught by Aloísio Magalhães and Alexandre Wollner (a hfg ulm graduate), both members of the foundation commission for the ESDI. Karl Heinz Bergmiller, a classmate of Wollner at ulm, moved from Germany to São Paulo in 1958. He became a member of the commission in 1963. His clear ideas regarding the teaching and practice of industrial design were decisive in the formulation of the study program.

The ESDI was officially created in December 1962, with a predominantly scientific-technical program. The ESDI was the start-ing point for many other design schools that were created later on in Brazil, when its graduates became design teachers.

8 Laura Escot, “Tomás Maldonado: Notes de parcours d’un ‘intellectuel technique’” Tomás (Milan: Senior Service Books, 2002), 99.

9 Pedro Luiz Pereira de Souza, ESDI, biografía de uma idéia (Rio de Janeiro: Universidade do Estado de Río de Janeiro, EDUERJ. Editora da Universidade, 1996), 3.

10 Pedro Luiz Pereira de Souza, ESDI, biografía de uma idéia (Río de Janeiro: Universidade do Estado de Río de Janeiro, EDUERJ. Editora da Universidade, 1996), 3.


In 1981, the National Council of Scientific and Technological (CNPq) started a broad industrialization program that explicitly involved industrial design. This was rather unusual because design-ers generally do not have access to policy circles dominated by engi-neers, economists, and other scientists. Gui Bonsiepe, at that time in Argentina, was invited to participate and moved to Brazil, creating in 1983 a design institute with the aim to train human resources locally—particularly design teachers from universities—and to intro-duce design to medium- and small-scale regional industries.

The Argentine ConnectionThe strong influence of Tomás Maldonado in the local context started before his ulmian period. From the 1940s, the publication of the magazines Arturo (1944) and Nueva Visión (1951); his activity in the group Arte Concreto-Invención (1946); the publication of the first article about industrial design in Argentina in the magazine cea2 (1949), and through his teaching activities, he mobilized and established a new discourse in art and architecture.11

On his first trip to Europe, in 1948, he established contact with representatives from concrete art, modern architecture, and design. He interviewed personalities such as George Vantongerloo, Henry van de Velde, Max Bill, Max Huber, and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart.

The political-economic context in Argentina was ripe for this influence. Under the presidency of Arturo Frondizi (1958–1962), a systematic plan for Argentine industry was promoted by the govern-ment.

In 1962, a group of representatives from Argentina visited the hfg ulm. It included Blas González (National Director of Culture), Jorge Romero Brest (Director of the Museum of Fine Arts), Ignacio Pirovano (industrialist and member of the National Committee of Science and Technology), and Amancio Williams (member of the Academy of Fine Arts).12

The government plan of 1962 included the creation of the Center for Industrial Design Research (CIDI) within the National Institute of Industrial Technology (INTI), with the objective of establishing relations between industry and design, and carrying out research and development (these missions varied with time, and eventually it became a center for design promotion).

The first manager of the CIDI was Basilio Uribe, an engineer. He organized seminars, expositions, design awards, and invitations to international specialists.13 Maldonado was a regular collabora-tor. In 1966, Gui Bonsiepe, as a consultant to the United Nations, taught a course on packaging design. Uribe asked Bonsiepe for an extended curriculum for teaching industrial design. The curriculum was completed, although never implemented.

In 1968, sponsored by UNESCO, the Seminar of Industrial Design Education in Latin America was organized in Buenos Aires, at

11 Tomás Maldonado, Escritos Preulmianos, preface by Carlos Méndez Mosquera (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Infinito, 1997), 12.

12 ulm 6 (Ulm, January 1963), 39. 13 Jorge Néstor Bozzano, Proyecto: razón y

esperanza. Escuela Superior de Diseño de Ulm (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1998), 146.


which the board members of the ICSID were present. The speakers were: Tomás Maldonado (ICSID President), Misha Black (UK), Arthur Pulos (U.S.), Roger Tallón (France), Iimari Tapiovara (Finland), Josine des Cressonnières (Belgium), Alexandre Wollner (Brazil), Teresa Gianella Estrems (Peru), and Basilio Uribe (Argentina). Among the seminar’s conclusions was:

If in our industrial reality the processes of craft fabrication belongs to an industrial protoform—industry with craft methods—it does not mean that our attitude to design should be less responsible towards the public to whom the objects are destined. What is more, it concerns everyone linked with the design of the human environment to adopt an objective attitude, which does not necessarily stifle creativity, but merely conditions it. What is necessary is a greater scientific knowledge of our society and a greater involvement in its reality.

In 1974, Gui Bonsiepe was designated coordinator of the Product Development Sector, which designed equipment for national needs (a bark-stripper for the quebracho tree, windows for the Patagonia region, solar-powered water heaters, charcoal-gasifying ovens, among others). The work ended abruptly in March 1976 with the military coup.

During the 1950s and ‘60s, five other design institutions apart from the CIDI were created: three at the university level (in the prov-inces of Cuyo, Litoral, and La Plata); the Pan-American School of Art (1955), oriented towards advertising; and the Institute Torcuato Di Tella (1958). The Di Tella Institute depended on the Center for Visual Arts (CAV), directed by Jorge Romero Brest, with the aim to promote initiatives and the works of artists with experimental character. The Department of Graphic Design was directed by Juan Carlos Distéfano, accompanied by Juan Andralis and Rubén Fontana, among others. The CAV was closed in 1970.14

In 1958, the Department of Design and Decoration was established at the University of Cuyo (Province of Mendoza), with a Bauhaus profile. In 1959, the then director visited Ulm and met with Bill and Maldonado, although without updating the program. Under a new director, however, it changed in 1962 with two strong influences: the ulm school and the Royal College of Art.15

In 1960, the Institute of Industrial Design (IDI) was created at the University of Litoral (Province of Santa Fe), with explicit and exclusive ulmian influence putting more emphasis on cooperation between the university and industry.16

The Design Department at the National University of La Plata (Province of Buenos Aires) formed its first design curriculum and started courses in 1961. Roberto Rollié, a member of the department wrote:

14 Horacio Bedegain, Arte visual en el Di Tella (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1986).

15 Guillermo Eirín and Ivette Colque, Historia del Diseño en Mendoza. Hasta 1966 (Research project, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza, 2000).

16 Carlos Méndez Mosquera, “Veinte años de diseño gráfico en la República Argentina,” Summa 15 (Buenos Aires, 1968).


The importance of the ulmian model for myself and my colleagues is evident, including all of its critical postures, which, from Tomás Maldonado’s point of view, were directed towards the Bauhaus experience.17

University Rebellion and Socialism: ChileTowards the end of the 1950s, the first proto-design courses were given with the title “Aesthetic Speculation about Domestic Objects,”18 at the College of Fine Arts of the University of Chile in Santiago. The result was a “contemporary craftsman.”

In 1966, courses for design began at the University of Chile in Valparaiso, influenced by the Bauhaus and the integral design of Max Bill, with a faculty, for the most part, formed by architects, and at the College of Architecture of the Catholic University, with an art (sculpture, poetry, and theatre) and Italian design influence.

In 1960, the College of Applied Arts was founded at the University of Chile in Santiago. And in 1967, an industrial design workshop was implemented. Two factors determined industrial design education at this institution: one political, linked to the national economic development; and the other educational—the orientation and content of the existing design course was criticized by the design students because it was not up-to-date. It was unclear as to what constitutes the domain of professional industrial design practice. In October 1968, Gui Bonsiepe, an expert in industrial design under contract from the International Labor Organization (ILO), arrived from Germany at the request of the Christian-Democratic government of Chile to work in a multidisciplinary program for the development of small- and medium-sized indus-trial companies.

The group of students who had criticized the design course at the University of Chile in Santiago contacted him, and started to work at the Technical Cooperation Service (SCT)—the counterpart institution of the ILO project. Towards the end of 1970, Bonsiepe was contracted by the government of Salvador Allende to direct, in the Committee of Technological Research (INTEC), a Product Development Group into which were integrated the four graduates and a young mechanical engineer. Later, some foreign designers also participated: Werner Zemp and Michael Weiss (both graduates of ulm) and Wolfgang Eberhagen. In 1973, Bonsiepe left Chile in the wake of the military coup.

Design education in Chile was, in its time, the most advanced example in Latin America of design successfully integrated into a political-economic project in support of a social program.

Design, Production, and Education: Mexico Mexico is a singular case in which design activity linked to compa-nies started earlier than formal design education. Many of these professional designers later became design educators.

17 Roberto Rollié, “La carrera de diseño en La Plata,” Silvia Fernández, coordinator, Tipográfica 2 (Buenos Aires, 1987): 4.

18 Fernando Shultz, Apuntes acerca del origen de las carreras de diseño en Chile (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico, 2001).


According to Oscar Salinas Flores,19 during the 1940s, in the context of a government with a nationalistic bent, the Mexican furni-ture industry began to integrate design. In this way, the first genera-tion of self-taught professionals appeared. Clara Porset Dumas, of Cuban origin, was one of these pioneers. Educated abroad and having practiced with teachers such as Josef Albers, she moved to Mexico and was influenced by its culture. This polarity produced a syncretic design, which somehow manifests the tension between the foreign influence and the prehispanic roots that characterized Mexican design.

In 1961, the first industrial design course at the College of Architecture at Iberoamerican University was taught by designers Horacio Durán, Jesús Virchez, and Sergio Chiappa. The curriculum was modified in 1963 to allow for a Bachelor’s degree and, in 1969, a major in the subject was offered.20 Omar Arroyo, influenced by ulm, was its professor during the first four semesters.

In 1969, a few months after the creation of the design major at Iberoamerican University, design courses began at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in the College of Architecture, under the direction of Horacio Durán. Both recognized the influence of the Bauhaus. In 1972, the Autonomous University of Guadalajara also started courses.

The Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), from 1975 on, based its courses on the ulmian approach, inviting educators such as Bernhard E. Bürdek (a graduate of ulm); Fernando Shultz (from Chile and a former member of the INTEC group); and Bonsiepe, who provided discourses that strengthened the foundations of design.

At the same time design education was growing at these institutions of higher learning, the Mexican government continued its policy of promoting industrial production and exports. In keep-ing with this objective, the Design Center at the Mexican Institute for Exterior Commerce (IMCE) was created in 1971. It lasted for five years until 1976, and was dedicated to design promotion, profes-sional training, and organizing awards for designers and the compa-nies that employed them.

Another interesting example of design integrated into the development process is the case quoted by Salinas Flores in the redesign of the Mexican airport system, produced with national technology, under the direction of Ernesto Velasco León. The team intervened in everything from public to operational areas, and even in the development of a crop-dusting airplane. There also is the design of public transport, coordinated by Miguel Angel Cornejo as well as the system of science and marine technology, directed by Cristina Jaber. These multidisciplinary teams combined representa-tives of public administration with teams of design educators and students at the UNAM.21

19 Oscar Salinas Flores, Historia del Diseño Industrial (Mexico: Trillas, 1992), 278.

20 María de Cosío (Personal communication, e-mail, 2001).

21 Oscar Salinas Flores, Historia del Diseño Industrial (Mexico: Trillas, 1992), 287.


Economic Blockade and National Industry: CubaCuba has shown, since its 1959 revolution, a development in graphic design supported by a graphic industrial infrastructure and preexist-ing schools of an advertising and fine art bent, that formed illustra-tors with a respectable tradition in design.22 In a country dominated by agricultural production, there was no tradition of industrial production.

Iván Espín Guillois, a Cuban architect educated at the Mas- sachusetts Institute of Technology, was invited by the Cuban govern-ment to develop the first regional plan for the Province of Havana. He practiced as both educator and architect in the same city.

In 1960 the government commissioned the curriculum for a new college of architecture. In 1966 he traveled to Europe with the architect Olga Astorquiza, under a scholarship awarded by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), to study the teaching methods of architecture and design.

In 1962, the Argentinean architect Roberto Segre had visited ulm. He contributed to make the ulm school known in Cuba where in 1972 he started a course on the history of industrial design in the school of literature and arts at the University of La Habana.

In 1965, by request of the Ministry of Industry, the first tech-nical assistance in design from the German Democratic Republic with the aim to form industrial designers for light industry began. Friedrich Saalborn was the foreign specialist who directed this first technical school project.23 In 1967, Espı́n organized the first Design Team for Light Industry. Saalborn was the educator of this team until 1968. But it became obvious that this experience was not enough to face the numerous and complex tasks. Therefore Espı́n proposed to the Ministry the foundation of a full-fledged design school.

In 1969, the first university-level course started at the School of Industrial and Information Design (EDI). It served for a small group of students, and depended on the Ministry of Light Industry. The course dealt with the necessities of the immediate context. Real life problems were mixed with ad hoc projects. The program was characterized by a solid methodological research base, particularly in the field of psychological phenomena.24 The curriculum required five years of study. Ten designers graduated. Towards the end of 1976, the last classes were given (years later, the university-level of these courses has been recognized).

In 1972, Fernando Salinas and Roberto Segre invited T. Maldonado,25 G. Bonsiepe, and Claude Schnaidt to Havana to participate in a cycle of lectures together with Martin Kelm (at that time, director of the Central Office of Design of the GDR) and Yuri Soloviev (his counterpart in Moscow).

The EDI served as base for the creation, in 1980, of the National Office for Industrial Design (ONDI), a central institution in charge of organizing design practice, promoting design, and evaluating the design quality of products. To this end, a commission

22 Pedro García Espinosa Carrasco, Un camino diferente. Diseño industrial en Cuba (La Habana, Cuba: Departamento de Diseño industrial, Instituto Superior de Diseño Industrial, 1993), 3.

23 Brigitte Wolf, “Design in Cuba” (Interview with Ivan Espín) Tendenzen 162 (Munich, April–June, 1988).

24 Santiago Pujol (Personal communication, e-mail, 2002).

25 Laura Escot, “Tomás Maldonado: Notes de parcours d’un “intellectuel technique’” in Tomás, 108.


was formed headed by the minister, himself, with Espín as executive secretary and later as director. Architects Olga Astorquiza, Lourdes Marti, and graduates of the EDI also participated during its first phase. In 1984, the College of Industrial and Information Design (ISDI) was founded.

Espín recognized the influence of socialist countries in the creation of these institutions, but did not mention, even during an interview by Brigitte Wolf in 1988 for the German magazine Tendenzen, the influence of the hfg ulm, despite the obvious link-age.

In 1984, Bonsiepe was sent as an expert of UNIDO to carry out, among other activities, the reformulation of the original plan of the ONDI.

Lines of Influence: ColombiaIn Colombia, design education did not originate directly from political-economic conditions.

According to existing bibliographic sources, three currents can be traced in the early development of design education, which showed the Bauhaus influence. In 1945, the architect Alvaro Ortega returned to Colombia after having studied at Harvard University with Walter Gropius. The University of the Andes was founded in 1948, and he was appointed professor of the First Workshop of Basic Design in recognition of his knowledge of the Bauhaus course. Dicken Castro was assistant professor.

In 1957, Castro and another architect, Enrique Triana, directed the first basic course at the College of Architecture at the National University of Colombia.26

In 1966, the first course of industrial design at the National University of Colombia was organized by Guillermo Sicard Montejo. Jaime Gutiérrez Lega and Daniel Obregón were professors. Colombia received more Bauhaus influence the following year through the Swiss-American designer Alfred B. Girardi, a consultant to the UN. He taught industrial design courses, and did research on Colombian arts and crafts.27

In 1969, a design major was initiated at the National University.

The University of Tadeo Lozano began its first graphic design program in 1967 with courses under David Consuegra and Ana de Jacobini. In 1974, the College of Industrial Design was created, with Giulio Vinaccia as dean. The faculty consisted of graduates of the founding courses and two German professors, Ingo Werk and Gerd Schussler, both from the College of Design of Offenbach, which followed the lines of ulm, with an emphasis on semiology. This new line of influence, therefore, was indirectly, ulmian.

In 1964, “Arts and Crafts of Colombia” was created as an autonomous institution which now is linked to the Ministry of Economic Development, whose objective is the support of the

26 Dicken Castro (Personal communication, e-mail, 2002).

27 Proyectodiseño, Historia del diseño de producto en Colombia (Bogotá, Colombia: Proyectodiseño, Revista de diseño, Siglo XX, www.proyectod.com/historia/3hispor60s.html), 2002.


crafts sector in technological processes, commercialization, promo-tion, and the development of human resources. In the beginning, recently graduated American students (members of the U.S. Peace Corps) lived and worked together with craftsmen, and reevaluated the vernacular culture.28

In 1973, this experience gave rise to the School/Workshop of Design, under Arts and Crafts of Colombia. The artist Carlos Rojas was its first director. In this third line of arts and crafts influence the University Pontificia Bolivariana created, in 1972, parting from the Art and Decoration Program, the College of Design.

Other Latin American TerritoriesDuring the 1950s, Venezuela, similar to other countries, initiated a policy of import substitution through the establishment of industrial parks for the production and assembly of components. The universi-ties reoriented themselves towards science and technology. The first research centers were established. Most of this effort was devoted to developing the country’s furniture industry.In this context, the first educational institutions were created: 1. The Institute of Design Neumann, in 1964, through initia-

tive of the industrialist Hans Neumann;29

2. The University Institute of Technology Antonio José de Sucre, in 1972; and,

3. The University Simón Bolívar, in 1989. Its Department of Mechanical Engineering established the Model and Prototype Development Section at the undergraduate and post-graduate level to meet the needs of the public sector and private industry.30

The development of design education in Peru is described by Teresa Gianella-Estrems, who was involved from the beginning:

Personally, my assistance at the seminar organized by the CIDI in October of 1968 had a great influence in my percep-tion of design, through the influence of Tomás Maldonado. Gui Bonsiepe, with whom I was able to converse in Santiago de Chile (1969) and in Lima (1971), when he visited the PREVI Project, and at the end of 1973 when he left Chile, had an influence the students of architecture through the magazine of the ulm school ... Also, the relation with Bonsiepe’s students during the first years of the 1970s and the manuscripts he sent us—written from Chile—were always factors of influence although they began to conflict increasingly with the Peruvian context; a difficult coun-try, due to its geography and great cultural and biological diversity, which in the 1970s was the leader in the constitu-tion of the Andean Community ... under a populist, left-ist, and statist military regime. The Agrarian Reform, the new Law of Industry and the import substitution policy

28 Artesanías de Colombia (www.artesaniasdecolombia.gov.co), 2002.

29 Elina Pérez Urbaneja, Breve Historia del diseño Industrial en Venezuela (www.analitica.com/va/arte/portafolio/6742383.asp), 2003.

30 Alberto Sato, El diseño industrial en Venezuel Detrás de las cosas (Caracas: Centro de Arte la Estancia, 1995), 77.


were designed to be the engine of industrial development but ... industrial development and technological innova-tion— which involved Peruvian industrial design—never became a reality in Peru. An example of a government initiative was the creation of the National Institute of Industrial Technology and Technical Norms (INTINTEC). It had an industrial design office, and sponsored the study and publication of the Anthropometric Manual of the Peruvian Population. Rationalism and social sensitivity, by the light of the theory of dependence, were, in the 1970s, ideological currents that were very congruent with the conceptual proposal of design generated by Bonsiepe during his stay at the INTEC-Chile. The experiences of industrial design in the 1970s (the experimental housing project PREVI, first and second stage) received this impact; in the last period of the first stage of PREVI worked a foreign expert—an industrial designer of the post-Maldonado ulm worked there. The COPESCO Plan (equipment and infrastructure for tourism in the Andean south of Peru, 1975–85) has been another attempt and a partial success of industrial design in our country, but in this case the influence of the functional trend in the design of equipment/furniture was less. In 1981, the Catholic University of Peru, Lima (PUCP) decided to create an industrial design course that became operative in 1983. In this case, the first curriculum shows influences from the hfg ulm and the Royal College of Art, but is adapted to the demands of a country where small industry—with little capital investment and a lot of labour—prevailed and continues to prevail, particularly in the production of durable goods for internal consumption, with low technological profile.31

The Urgency of UtopiaThe program and the values of the hfg ulm marked the strongest influence in the origin of design in Latin America, principally in those countries where consciousness of design as an economic factor was most developed, and where politicians showed receptivity for the importance of design in the process of industrialization and commercialization.

An important factor has been that academics, workers, and intellectuals understood that the path towards the realization of the political project was only possible through a democratic social-ism, oriented towards social inclusion and not—as the neoliberal model—towards social exclusion.

31 Teresa Gianella-Estrems (Personal communications, e-mail, 2002).


Often in cooperation with the U.S. CIA, local military and conservative politicians thwarted this process.32, 33, 34 The result was the execution without trial of a great number of Latin Americans who dreamed of continental liberty, of a life with equal rights. It also marked the end of industrial development, as well as a certain degree of economic autonomy.

The following governments imposed policies based on the privatization of public enterprises, and the taking out of loans from international financial organizations that did nothing more than increase the debt and misery of each country. The consumption of imported goods was encouraged, with the corresponding decrease in internal production to the point of dismantling the productive base, putting a strain on the balance of payments (because the foreign products had to be paid with hard currency gained from exports).

This process, increased during the 1990s, caused a demo-graphic explosion of institutions for design education, the majority established as “educational businesses.”

Today, both old and new, public and private, institutions coexist, with different objectives that have suffered in different ways from the impact of globalization: 1. Globalization redefined the profile of the Latin American

designer; 2. The market, dominated by private industry and interests,

was the client (and not defined by broader social interests); 3. Demand required the specialization of CI (corporate iden-

tity) and communication, following the example of large, multinational companies that imposed new standards in product presentation and multimedia communication;

4. Branding, corporate identity, product differentiation, competition, efficiency, impact, prestige, and power are the arguments that support design under globalization;

5. The institutions for design education that appeared in the 1960s attempted to keep up with the new develop-ments but, with few exceptions, encountered difficulties in handling the impositions of the new demand;

6. These older institutions promoted, in general, scholastic research leading to a repetitive theory, separated from design practice;

7. The institutions had, as well, budget difficulties when faced with the necessity to incorporate computer equipment;

8. The private sector used this competitive advantage, along with the inclusion of the topics of management and marketing;

9. Enrollment in graphic design courses and related studies grew exponentially in contrast to industrial design, which dropped due to a lack of demand;

32 Alentar Kennedy, Embaixadora admite erros dos EUA (Folha de São Paulo, September 5, 2002).

33 Powell afirma que su país „no está orgul-loso, de su apoyo a Pinochet (Madrid: El País, February 23, 2003).

34 Paci Peña, Gli interventi statunitensi in América Latina in Il libero nero del capitalismo (Milan: Maro Tropea Editore, 1999).


10. The indispensable design experience for design teaching is found only on a minor scale, and the lack of faculty renova-tion generates an inertia in the pedagogic process that is opposite to the principles of the hfg ulm;

11. The current academic order of merit tends, in many institu-tions, to give preference to postgraduate titles over profes-sional design competence;

12. The academic promotion in the university career (master, doctorate); controlled to a great extent by external, nonde-sign criteria; runs the risk of negatively influencing courses, workshops, and the very profile of design education, lead-ing to a design (and theoretical) anemia;

13. In this context, design is seen as a minor issue and subordi-nated to the theoretical production it fosters;

14. Some graduates achieve professional practice, but a good many are reinserted into the education profession, in which the “education industry” offers a demand and guarantees a career and personal economic stability; and,

15. In Argentina alone, there were nearly sixty institutions for design education in the 1990s.

In Brazil, more than fifty currently are registered, and Chile and Mexico each have more than sixty institutions for educating design-ers. Design in Latin America today is much stronger rooted in the academic area than in industry and public and private business, demonstrating a lack of impact on the economic, social, and cultural environments. A profession based on innovation to a great extent has been trapped in bureaucratic processes in academia or economic interests, abandoning its intrinsic dynamic.

The history described here shows the extent to which a peda-gogic project depends on socioeconomic processes. In the 1960s, with the creation of the first institutions for design education, it was the influence of the hfg ulm, and since the 1980s, it has been the imposi-tion of the neoliberal paradigm.

My hope is that the disenchantment with globalization will open a reflection about the model of society to be desired, and that design can revise its contribution and accompany a more just social project.


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Websiteswww.artesaniasdecolombia.gov.co

Historia del diseño de producto en Colombia. Proyectodiseño. Revista de diseño. Bogotá, Colombia. Siglo XX.

www.proyectod.com/historia/3hispor60s.html

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www.vitruvius.com.br/drops/drops.asp

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Personal CommunicationsGui Bonsiepe, (Cologne, Germany). Graduate and educator at the hfg ulm.

María de Cosío (Puebla, Mexico). Graduate of the Universidad Iberomaericana, Mexico.

Dicken Castro Duque (Bogotá, Colombia).

Teresa Gianella-Estrems (Lima, Peru). PUCP (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú).

Heiner Jacob (Alemania). Graduate of the hfg ulm.

Martin Krampen Graduate and educator at hfg ulm.

Manuel Parga (Colombia), Postgraduate of the Universidad de las Américas, Puebla, México.

Santiago Pujol (La Habana, Cuba). Graduate of the School for Industrial and Information Design (ESD), La Habana.17

Dagma Rinker and Marcela Quijano (Ulm, Germany). hfg-Archiv ulm.

Nick Roericht (Ulm, Germany). Graduate and educator at the hfg ulm.

Roberto Segre (Argentina-Cuba), architect.

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